


What Comes Between

by jmandrake



Category: Nancy Drew (Video Games)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 14:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1432573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmandrake/pseuds/jmandrake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is something trying to be a fairy tale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Comes Between

This is something trying to be a fairy tale. 

So the first thing you need to know: Nancy Drew was always in River Heights.

It didn’t matter how many miles away she was, what remote Himalayan villa or Turkish palace she’d found, she was always in this town. You could see her in headlines, in photos plastered on the walls of local restaurants, in news featurettes about local heroes. She _belonged_  there because the town had claimed her, had said emphatically, over and over,  _she’s ours, all right, and that girl traipsing through the rainforests out there, she was born right here, she’s a River Heights girl, no doubt about it. There’s nothing that girl can’t do._  And they weighed her name in their mouths like a rosary.

You could see her sometimes, too, wedged between a boy she liked and a girl she didn’t. They had to stare at each other through her, just as if she were actually there with them instead of halfway around the world. And they both moved around the spaces she left behind. When the boy reached for the girl beside him, his hand swung for a moment in the empty air just above her shoulder, as if he were reaching for someone else. Sometimes the girl’s name stuck in his throat because he had been about to say  _Nancy_ , but he stopped himself, and the girl heard in that silence years and years of conversations he had already had with someone else. They both hated that silence. So they filled it up with words that didn’t mean much and kisses that meant everything and slowly they tried to burn Nancy out of their brains. If they let themselves think even for a moment, she was there again, just out of their reach. The boy couldn’t have her, the girl couldn’t be her. But as soon as they saw her again, they closed their eyes and kissed each others’ throats and said  _we’re desperate we’re desperate_  in a language no one else could hear.

And here’s the second thing you need to know.

Everyone in town knew the boy because he had been Nancy’s. They had seen the two of them holding hands, slipping in tiny kisses as they strolled down the sidewalk. But when Nancy went away, they had a hard time placing him. He seemed familiar, but not especially extraordinary on his own. He was someone who belonged to Nancy, so he was probably very special indeed, but they could not for the life of them see why.

But the girl saw. She loved him, wanted to know him from his bones out, and when he kissed her for the first time, she cried and whispered  _oh, Ned_ , and when he heard his name, his vision cleared and he could see the girl clearly, could see that her eyes were light green and that they were lovely, and for just that one moment, there was nothing between them at all.


End file.
